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My company is the same way, you need to open a ticket with the helpdesk to have the temperature changed. We just put frozen food on top of the thermostat and it gets nice and toasty, problem solved. Amazing what a bag of frozen peas can do!
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 22:21 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 15:48 |
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rolleyes posted:Do you work in my office? I always thought a great solution would be to glue some fake thermostats to the wall and let people go nuts. I'm sure just THINKING that they're changing the temperature would satisfy them.
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 22:27 |
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haljordan posted:I always thought a great solution would be to glue some fake thermostats to the wall and let people go nuts. I'm sure just THINKING that they're changing the temperature would satisfy them.
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 22:38 |
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haljordan posted:I always thought a great solution would be to glue some fake thermostats to the wall and let people go nuts. I'm sure just THINKING that they're changing the temperature would satisfy them. I remember another thread a few years back where exactly that happened. Some guy was having a thermostat war in his office, and eventually it got bad enough that the boss secretly moved the control unit to the back of a utility closet. The original control unit was left intact but disconnected. Then he put the most outspoken whiner in charge of the fake unit, and complaints came to a complete stop.
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 22:44 |
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over the phone, paraphrased customer: are you guys having any power problems? us: no, are you guys having some problems? customer: yeah, can you check that my equipment is powered on?  Click here for the full 800x533 image. Yeah, don't plug power strips into other power strips.
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 23:13 |
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You guys think thermostat wars are silly? The last place I worked had light wars. This was a small development house where all of the programmers were at open desks in a single huge room. True to the stereotype, there were a couple of individuals who simply couldn't tolerate having window blinds open. Or lights on. At all. If someone 30 feet away turned on a desk lamp directed downward, one of them in particular would start angrily muttering to himself just loud enough to draw attention to how the light was "hurting his eyes." 
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| # ? Dec 15, 2008 23:18 |
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borrowedladder posted:Or they'll expect you're running some kind of occult operation when the mail is returned by "MAILER-DAEMON." The results are seldom great when they do read it. I only vaguely remember having to explain what a mailer daemon was, and the person I explained it to accepted it without further comment. The true beauty was the gentleman who called up absolutely mortified. He had a message bounced back from an organisation that used qmail, had read it through partially and started to panic. The panic culminated with the decision to call us and ask what to do. What was the matter? The message said "This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out." He was truly concerned that he'd offended someone and wanted to know how he could get in touch with them to apologise. Only after going around in circles for about ten minutes did he finally accept that it was a computer program, and incapable of feeling any sort of emotion towards him, much less offence, and that if he tried to send the email again with the typo fixed it would diligently deliver it. He sounded uncertain, but after urging and coaxing he went off to try it. Since he never called back I'm guessing that either he tried anyway, or his body is yet to be discovered in his home after festering there for several years as the result of a tragic suicide.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 00:23 |
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I've got a load of issues I don't even really want to get into. I'll just tell the oldest story I have, and leave the rest for another day. I was hired the second month of my freshman year of college by Bob. Bob had just been promoted internally that past summer to the job of running the campus Resnet, as the person formerly doing the job had been promoted to a far better job. Bob was entertainingly useless. As befit student employees, we were not allowed access to the firewall ban list (for people who did  or whose computers were spamming Blaster or something), or the switch port->MAC mapper (for when we came out to find out what the gently caress was wrong with their wall jack).But Rincebrain, you say, aren't most wall jacks labeled with corresponding labels in the wiring closet? Why yes, in fact, they were...once. Unfortunately, whenever someone migrated to another switch port (either because their jack went dead or the port on the switch failed or they were incompetent and just moved someone to another port to make the problem go away), it wasn't noted...anywhere. As a consequence, the cabling in all of the student buildings was a goddamn mess, and tracing the wires was great fun for all. But Rincebrain, what about toners? Oh, we got one my senior year.  So, anyway. This basically meant that we got to call Bob whenever we went out to diagnose a physical problem. Bob was a full-time employee. This is important. I think I only ever caught him at his desk...once. The other times, he was in the car on his way home, or he was at home. It got to the point that, over two years, I started just calling his boss or his predecessor to do it, and save time. But that's not all! For the first two years I worked there, we still charged for Resnet access (hurr durr internal politics  ), and as a result, we got a lot of calls from people about billing issues. We were, by policy, required to forward all of these to Bob for handling, since we also didn't get to handle payment stuff.There were weeks that went by where the only tickets in our queue were tickets that Bob needed to deal with. Again, it got to the point where his boss would come by and ask if we had any tickets laying around that he'd just left there, and then he'd get a savage beating. When we went to his cubicle to ask him to do things, we'd almost always find him playing Call of Duty or some random demo FPS. We'd ask him to do something, and he'd go "sure!" and it'd never happen. Ever. Two years later, he was fired. I've been informed by various people that it takes two years minimum of internal red tape to get someone fired unless they've done something to piss off someone in HR, so apparently his boss started the machinery to get him fired literally right after hiring him. Choice quotes from his boss: "The only good thing he ever did was hiring you." "Between you and me, I'd have been better off hiring a chimp."  Edit: Oh, I almost forgot. When he was fired, he stole a ton of random poo poo from his cubicle - random full copies of software and hardware that was just laying around. His boss ranted to me about it at length.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 01:00 |
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Karanth posted:You guys think thermostat wars are silly? The last place I worked had light wars. Find your regional equivalent for the lighting standard (That's the European standard, for example), set it to standard-compliant, and then tell them to shut up as it's 'to standard'. Nobody argues with defined standards, it's great. It creates the illusion that it's outside your control so they don't bitch to you. edit: This appears to be the ANSI equivalent for the US. Alternatively, I'm guessing that this is the ISO one. Nam Taf fucked around with this message at Dec 16, 2008 around 02:48 |
| # ? Dec 16, 2008 02:44 |
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The best one I ran into was a guy who couldn't connect to the network. I then spent four hours on the phone with him going through everything I could possibly think of. Couldn't find a thing wrong. From a software side this system is the picture of health. There's nothing I can do for this guy. He then calls the VP of the company (who he's close friends with) and complains that I'm not helping him. The VP chews out everyone down the chain to me and it ends up back on my desk. I call the guy and tell him to overnight the box to me and I'll get it working and overnight it back to him. The next day the box arrives and lo and behold there's duct tape on the back. Hmm... that looks suspicious. Pulling off the duct tape causes the network card to literally fall out of the machine. This genius had decided that rather than opening the case he'd use a pair of tin snips to cut a hole in the expansion slot covers and stick the card in that way. Only that didn't work because the card was still too big. So he CUT THE TOP AND BOTTOM OFF THE BRACKET ON THE CARD. Now even though it fits in through the hole he can't get enough leverage to force the card into the slot. So he DUCT TAPES THE CARD IN PLACE! And he's surprised that it doesn't work. Needless to say everyone in management above me got a good look at what he'd done to their expensive hardware.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 05:39 |
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Nam Taf posted:Find your regional equivalent for the lighting standard (That's the European standard, for example), set it to standard-compliant, and then tell them to shut up as it's 'to standard'. I'm sure that the very existence of such a standard would have garnered further support for working in a nerd-cave so as not to submit to "the man."
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 05:56 |
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I had a doctor call me up and go ballistic over the phone because his printer was printing "upside down". Now, I thought he meant the letters were reversed, as if you held the piece of paper up to a mirror. No. Turns out, the paper was sitting in the tray so that it literally came out upside down. As in, all he had to do was rotate it 180 degrees.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 06:14 |
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haljordan posted:Turns out, the paper was sitting in the tray so that it literally came out upside down. As in, all he had to do was rotate it 180 degrees. Was it pre-holed paper or something otherwise it's just silly talk.  EDIT: No wait, that just means the holes are on the left instead of the right. argh.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 07:06 |
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I'm assuming it was some kind of company letterhead.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 07:18 |
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Spazz posted:I seriously just had one of the teachers ask me about a car problem. I had to go program the GPS in the CEOs new company car once. That was actually kind of fun though.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 15:36 |
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haljordan posted:I had a doctor call me up and go ballistic over the phone because his printer was printing "upside down". Now, I thought he meant the letters were reversed, as if you held the piece of paper up to a mirror. I was so happy the day I figured out what this little icon meant and I never had to guess which way to put the paper in again: code:
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 16:27 |
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Anybody deal with clients abroad? "Hi Dan, I can´t reproduce the same mistake at this time, but I tell you that the problem is that we are not coming down certificates to encrypt automatically, but this was operate fine in the beginning, in some time is stopped working and we do not know why, we have been in contact with Oscar from Colombia who has advised us since the implementation, we could not find the problem Thanks. Marco" "Dan, I have a question, why is may have damaged our GPO?, it can happen again? It´s possible make a backup them if they happen again? About the network connection I can’t improve it, sorry. Thanks. Marco" "Dan, then if it is impossible to recover this certificate, which are the steps to regularize the subject, once this regularized, we are recommend? 1° Decrypting all existing files and re-encrypts once solved the problems whit auto enrollment? 2° Or is not necessary to decryting, because it was in automatic update? Thanks Marco"
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 16:52 |
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Javid posted:I'm assuming it was some kind of company letterhead. Exactly. This doctor is one of those users who thinks that his problems get fixed quickly because he screams all the time. In reality, its because his problems are usually fixed with 7 seconds of troubleshooting. What a smug prick.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 17:38 |
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Just had a good one. We usually don't deal with users having connectivity problems, but this one was just a few cubicles away, so off I went. No matter what he did, he kept getting a 169.254.x.x address, always the same one. I checked if there was any error on the switch port and everything was fine, even his mac showed on the port. His mac-address was making it to the router, ip helpers were fine since everyone else on the floor was getting an address, it was just his second pc that was not getting any. We were puzzled until we went and checked the machine itself. An ipconfig /all was returning WINS and we don't use WINS. Turns out he hardcoded the 169.254.x.x address with the correct gateway and everything. Also, this guy used to be working on firewalls before he got switched to another department, I'm pretty sure he did this on purpose (at least I hope so).
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 18:28 |
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nene posted:What was the matter? The message said "This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out." I used to run several qmail mail servers, and this message caused a lot of headaches. Dan Bernstein has been criticized, and I think rightly so, for including that as the default text of the delivery failure message.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 18:29 |
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Has someone locked your machine remotely? Are you having software remotely pushed? Were you instructed not to log in? Did you call the helpdesk asking if you can unlock the machine, and you were told no? Unlock it anyway and kick off the user who is logged in! All those errors that pop up when you log in are clearly our fault, as is the fact that a bunch of your programs no longer work. This is an excellent way to lose your local admin privileges that you begged and pleaded for. Please submit another helpdesk ticket without notifying the person working on the first one. The person who gets the new ticket will enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out just what you have done to the PC. Please make sure to not mention your previous problems until they are at a point of complete frustration.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 18:42 |
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haljordan posted:Exactly. I worked for a place that did nothing but tech support for doctors and hospitals. I learned very quickly to hate doctors with a passion. So many were abusive, egotistical, and completely addicted to pornography it was unreal. They reminded me of going to the grocery store, seeing a kid having a huge fit because he wants candy, and his mom just finally shoves it in his face to get him to shut up. That kid grows up to be a doctor and is now on the phone with me. I will say this though, on my last day of working there, I was fixing an issue for a doctor, and he was genuinely nice. It was the only time I could recall a doctor actually being nice and decent during the whole time I worked there.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 18:59 |
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Ratmtattat posted:I worked for a place that did nothing but tech support for doctors and hospitals. I learned very quickly to hate doctors with a passion. So many were abusive, egotistical, and completely addicted to pornography it was unreal. They reminded me of going to the grocery store, seeing a kid having a huge fit because he wants candy, and his mom just finally shoves it in his face to get him to shut up. That kid grows up to be a doctor and is now on the phone with me. During my HelpDesk tenure, I dealt with about 6 nice doctors. The other 1500 were complete dicks and firmly subscribed to the 'Give me what I want now or I'll make your life hell' doctrine. One in particular ended up in possession of the CIO's home number in case there was an issue that we couldn't handle for him at 3am. Total, complete, utter cockmuncher.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 19:04 |
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Ratmtattat posted:I worked for a place that did nothing but tech support for doctors and hospitals. I learned very quickly to hate doctors with a passion. So many were abusive, egotistical, and completely addicted to pornography it was unreal. They reminded me of going to the grocery store, seeing a kid having a huge fit because he wants candy, and his mom just finally shoves it in his face to get him to shut up. That kid grows up to be a doctor and is now on the phone with me. It annoys me because I've been at this job for ~18 months now, and this guy KNOWS I'm going to fix his problem as soon as possible. Why he still feels the need to throw a hissy fit every time is beyond me. Also, as a doctor, he should understand the concept of "triage" and how it can apply to tech support. Meaning, if there's a server down somewhere, his request to add an extra title to his display name in Outlook is gonna have to wait. But nooooooooo.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 19:07 |
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haljordan posted:It annoys me because I've been at this job for ~18 months now, and this guy KNOWS I'm going to fix his problem as soon as possible. Why he still feels the need to throw a hissy fit every time is beyond me. They have lost their sense of asking. After a while, they get so used to demanding everything, it becomes who they are.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 19:29 |
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haljordan posted:It annoys me because I've been at this job for ~18 months now, and this guy KNOWS I'm going to fix his problem as soon as possible. Why he still feels the need to throw a hissy fit every time is beyond me. Speaking of servers being down, we lost connection to our remote datacenter. About half the remote computers rely on them for apps and such. Hello 1000 tickets saying the same damned thing.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 19:42 |
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Chunky Monkey posted:Speaking of servers being down, we lost connection to our remote datacenter. About half the remote computers rely on them for apps and such. Hello 1000 tickets saying the same damned thing. Yeah and then people get even more pissed when they can't reach you because you're already on the phone trying to fix poo poo 
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 20:07 |
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haljordan posted:Yeah and then people get even more pissed when they can't reach you because you're already on the phone trying to fix poo poo Datacenter fires at 4am are a great way to have 100 people waiting on the phone, as well.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 20:22 |
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Doc Faustus posted:The problem I have with "The System" is that while one is walking around with a clipboard, tickets properly submitted to the queue are not being worked on. Not always true. When I did desktop support, my area to cover was HR and all of the VPs. Instead of starting my day by sitting at my desk pretending to review emails from the day before like everyone else I worked with, I would start by walking through HR, seeing if anyone had any problems. If anything was submitted through the helpdesk that I needed to address, my pager would go off and I could address the problem faster since I was already in the area.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 20:27 |
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:3quote:New Ticket: Hello! How sweet. BTW, sig pads from Ingenico are a nightmare to get serviced.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 20:45 |
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Sympathetic Wasp posted:Not always true. When I did desktop support, my area to cover was HR and all of the VPs. Instead of starting my day by sitting at my desk pretending to review emails from the day before like everyone else I worked with, I would start by walking through HR, seeing if anyone had any problems. If anything was submitted through the helpdesk that I needed to address, my pager would go off and I could address the problem faster since I was already in the area. This is a great strategy, because it prevents situations where a user experiences a problem for weeks and tells no one, which leads to an email from their supervisor yelling at you over a problem you knew nothing about.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 21:19 |
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When I worked at a hospital there was one doctor who was so happy that I fixed his laptop that he said "anytime you need an abortion, come give me a call" and he handed me his card. Surreal.
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| # ? Dec 16, 2008 21:42 |
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ZippySLC posted:When I worked at a hospital there was one doctor who was so happy that I fixed his laptop that he said "anytime you need an abortion, come give me a call" and he handed me his card. I hope you keep that card on you and casually introduce it as your "free abortion coupon".
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 00:51 |
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Mr. Fix It posted:I hope you keep that card on you and casually introduce it as your "free abortion coupon". The ladies will be all over you.
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 04:32 |
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ZippySLC posted:When I worked at a hospital there was one doctor who was so happy that I fixed his laptop that he said "anytime you need an abortion, come give me a call" and he handed me his card. "Nah baby, we don't need condoms...I got this get out of jail free card."
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 04:47 |
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Greatest ticket that I have come across in my time doing support at uni goes simply like this:quote:plzzz help Oh and my personal favourite: quote:Help! My computer is running very slowly and is making strange sounds!
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 05:06 |
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morts posted:plzzz help Why do people not ever take responsibility for their fuckups? I did that once (sorta), I formatted the wrong drive (my Windows drive) when I was installing Linux to play around with. Welp, it was time for me to try some data recovery tools and reinstall a bunch of stuff. I hosed up. Why do people expect other people to be their computer safety net? I didn't want to rant much, but come on, guys!
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 10:12 |
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Raluek posted:Why do people not ever take responsibility for their fuckups? I did that once (sorta), I formatted the wrong drive (my Windows drive) when I was installing Linux to play around with. Welp, it was time for me to try some data recovery tools and reinstall a bunch of stuff. I hosed up. Why do people expect other people to be their computer safety net? Haven't used rf much unless I absolutely knew what I was doing, but is -rf recursive/format? Of my own, we run IBM application development software w/local servers for developers. They don't have their own machines, they share. After many, many e-mails, and a pop-up when they log-out reminding them to shutdown the local server, we still got tickets all the time about how they couldn't load their project. No poo poo, the previous user is still logged into the server. And IBM, in their infinite wisdom, locks a server to a user, so the next guy to log-in can't shut down the server to load their own project. (FYI, I work for a non-profit, and we don't have the money to set up a remote server, we got the IBM software through a grant, so it's either figure out how to use it locally, or we don't use the software at all)
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 10:18 |
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pimpedlightsaber posted:Haven't used rf much unless I absolutely knew what I was doing, but is -rf recursive/format? The f is for force, it does not prompt you for "are you SURE you want this important stuff to be gone?"
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| # ? Dec 17, 2008 10:20 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 15:48 |
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Raluek posted:Why do people not ever take responsibility for their fuckups? I did that once (sorta), I formatted the wrong drive (my Windows drive) when I was installing Linux to play around with. Welp, it was time for me to try some data recovery tools and reinstall a bunch of stuff. I hosed up. Why do people expect other people to be their computer safety net? Here every teacher has a laptop, and we have made it clear that you are to keep all important files on your network share. If your laptop dies, we don't recover it. If we have to image your laptop because you messed it up, we don't recover it. If you drop it, we don't recover it. The network share is backed up nightly. Having this stern policy has greatly helped people from expecting us to be their safety net. Also, I've made a habit of using -rfv just so if I do have an 'Oh, poo poo!' moment I can break it before it does severe damage. Spazz fucked around with this message at Dec 17, 2008 around 12:04 |
| # ? Dec 17, 2008 12:00 |
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